Distance: 2.8 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps

Towpath walk in the fringes of the Peak District. Follows the lower reaches of the Peak Forest Canal in Derbyshire from New Mills to its terminus at Bugsworth Basin.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Peak Canal Basin

From Stourport-on-Severn to Shardlow if there is one thing that the Midlands are known for, then it is a plethora of inland ports, which had a brief heyday in the late 18th and early 19th Century when canals were the most efficient and effective means of conveying bulk goods quickly and safely.

What it less well known, is that some of the largest inland ports were in the far north of the region on the fringes of the Peak District.

The reason for this was the trade in the region’s valuable limestone, lead and gritstone. From High Peak Junction where it interchanged with the Cromford and High Peak Railway, north western Derbyshire’s mineral wealth was shipped south along the Cromford Canal. A waterway which took it south towards Nottingham and the River Trent. It was a similar story at Froghall in Staffordshire where Peak District limestone was loaded onto the barges that freighted it along the Caldon Canal towards Stoke-on-Trent and beyond.

These two major inland ports were small in size and economic importance compared to Bugsworth Basin at the bottom of the Peak Forest Canal.

The Peak Forest Canal is a relatively short inland waterway, running more or less due north for 14 miles from the edge of the Peak District to Ashton-under-Lyne due east of Manchester. However, throughout the 19th Century it was utterly crucial for the development of North Western England as Midlands limestone was shipped north towards the chemical industry and building sites of what is now Greater Manchester.

Thanks to its porous limestone geology the southern Peak District in Derbyshire and Staffordshire is poor terrain for canal building. This lead Benjamin Outram the Peak Forest Canal’s primary engineer to decide to end the canal at the village of Bugsworth rather than heading south towards the rich limestone quarries at Dove Holes (which operate to this day).

Instead the stone would be brought to Bugsworth Basin by an early form of horse drawn railway, the Peak Forest Tramway. Long horse drawn wagon trains on rails trundled down from the quarries to the start of the canal at Bugsworth where it was loaded onto docked narrowboats for transportation north.

Bugsworth Basin opened in 1796 and quickly became one of the busiest inland ports in the UK, and eventually the largest on the narrow canal network.

A testimony to the scale and important of the operation is the fact the Basin was extended numerous times. The final extension opened in 1878, well over a decade after the first railway reached the area.

Indeed the basin was at its busiest aroundabout 1900, attesting to the continued viability of Bugsworth Basin long after railways had poached other traffic from the canal.

The secret of this longevity and continued vitality is perhaps the fact that limestone did not have to move especially quickly. What was more important was a steady and reliable supply of this heavy, bulky material, making water carriage highly viable.

In the early 1920s however, traffic along the Peak Forest Tramway began to dwindle, with the line closing entirely in 1925. Bugsworth Basin followed it into obsolence shortly afterwards.

Like many other disused and derelict parts of the canal network in the early and mid 20th Century Bugsworth Basin was abandoned and filled in.

In 1968, however, as part of the burst of enthusiasm for Britian’s canals which burst forth during the post-war era work began to restore Bugsworth Basin as an operational canal basin. This was in concert with wider efforts to restore and revive the southern sections of the Peak Forest Canal.

Progress was slow, but steady, with the initial quixotic efforts of the volunteers eventually paying off nearly four decades later when Bugsworth Basin reopened in 2005.

The first narrowboat to leave the restored basin – fittingly – carried a shipment of Peak District limestone up to Ashton-under-Lyne at the far northern end of the Peak Forest Canal.

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps

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This walk from New Mills to Bugsworth Basin along the Peak Forest Canal begins from New Mills Newtown Railway Station (the outline of an alternative route to the Peak Forest Canal towpath from New Mills Central can be found here).

First head out into the carpark.

Walk across the carpark heading for the main road leading into the town.

Once you reach the road turn right.

Follow the road downhill. You approach an old mill which is still very much in industrial use as a factory for Swizzels Matlow a sweet maker whose brands include: Love Hearts, Parma Violets and Drumstick lollies.

Just before you pass the sweet factory you cross a bridge over the Peak Forest Canal.

Rounding a corner beside the sweet factory you approach the turn off for the towpath.

Soon you come to a narrow side road running off to your right.

Take a sharp turn, head down this road and walk along a short distance.

It leads out onto the Peak Forest Canal towpath opposite a small marina.

Here, turn left and start walking along the towpath.

The southern section of the Peak Forest Canal from the aqueduct at Marple is famously one of the most beautiful in the UK. It runs through a bucolic, increasingly hill landscape on the edge of the Peak District, between a series of little towns and villages formed during the industrial revolution. These days they are in fashion as places to move to from Manchester and the other inner Metropolitan Boroughs of Greater Manchester, as they become increasingly unaffordable.

You walk through this landscape for a couple of miles. In addition to the outflow from Manchester to live in houses and flats in places like New Mills, Furness Vale and Whaley Bridge, there are clearly a great many people living in narrowboats along the attractive waterway.

After walking steadily along the towpath you approach Bugsworth Basin at a canal junction where a very short arm heads off towards the centre of Whaley Bridge to the right.

Whilst the main line of the Peak Forest Canal continues to the left.

Bugsworth Basin is a long, but relatively narrow site.

Near its entrance stands a bridge across the waterway, and not far beyond that there is a floating cafe in a narrowboat.

At this point you can either cross the bridge to see a replica Peak Forest Tramway wagon on a small section of track, or continue up past the cafe towards a road. The Peak Forest Tramway was the means by which limestone was brought from the quarries to Bugsworth Basin. It is possible to extend the walk (by a little over another three miles) and partially trace its route as far as Chapel-en-le-Frith. At one time it connected up to the tramway system that later became the High Peak and Cromford Railway, the former line that today forms the basis for the High Peak Trail.

Halfway up the basin near the  there is a public road. This runs between the small village of Buxworth and Whaley Bridge.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

Follow the signs to the right into the centre of the large vilage of Whaley Bridge. Whaley Bridge has a station with hourly trains north back towards New Mills (where you can change for stations across the Peak District National Park to Sheffield), Stockport (for trains to the south including Stoke-on-Trent, Wolverhampton and Birmingham) and Manchester. As well as further south towards Buxton.